ROMAN
an AI opera in two acts
February 26, 2025 | 7pm
In Person Event
Free Admission
UCR ARTS
Event Info
ROMAN, a multimedia opera in two acts, questions the morality of designing intelligent machines to exhibit human-like behaviors.
Through a fictitious story about an AI virtual assistant committing murder after being fed degenerate training data, this work explores the future legal ramifications of crimes committed by AI, the reach of male toxicity, the plight of virtual echo chambers and polarization, and the paradox of developing human-like computers to work in tandem with increasingly machine-like human workforces.
ROMAN implores us to hold a mirror to our perceived values and calls an essential question: If we train autonomous AI with our concepts of morality, will the machines of the future follow our rules?
ROMAN (2022)
An Opera in Two Acts, 75’
Dramatis Personae
ROMAN – Synthesized AI Voice
The Inventor – Lyric Tenor
Employee #1 – Tenor/Baritone
Employee #2 – Baritone/Bass
Marketing Director (Lauren) – Mezzo Soprano
Instrumentation
Violin I
Violin II
Viola
Violoncello
Fixed Audiovisual Media (with click track)
Ian Dicke, composer and librettist
Ian Dicke is a composer inspired by social-political culture and music technology. Praised for his “refreshingly well-structured” (Feast of Music) and “uncommonly memorable” (Sequenza 21) catalogue of works, Dicke’s music has been commissioned and performed by ensembles and soloists around the world, including the New World Symphony, Alarm Will Sound, the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra, Paul Dresher Ensemble, pianist Vicky Chow, The MATA Festival, ISCM World New Music Days, and the Atlantic Coast Center Band Director’s Association.
Dicke has received grants, awards, and recognition from the Hellman Foundation, Barlow Endowment, San Francisco Conservatory of Music, New Music USA, New York Youth Symphony, ASCAP, and BMI, among others. He was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to research interactive musical interfaces and environments in Stockholm, Sweden and has served as an artist in residence at various institutions, including the MacDowell Colony and Atlantic Center for the Arts. Dicke is currently a faculty member at the University of California, Riverside.
